1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a character font memory to store character font patterns and, more particularly, to a font cartridge which has a character font memory therein which can be attached to and detached from a printer.
2. Related Background Art
Hitherto, in an electronic apparatus, e.g., a word processor with a printer to which a font cartridge can be attached, when print data consisting of a character code train is input, the character codes in the print data are interpreted. The font memory, which is provided in the apparatus and into which the character font pattern corresponding to the character codes is stored, is accessed. A desired font pattern is transferred to the printing unit and printed.
On the other hand, there have been also proposed various kinds of apparatuses in which in order to print the print data with a desired font type in accordance with a variety of the font patterns for printing, the font patterns corresponding to the type style are previously stored into a plurality of font cartridges, the font pattern of a desired arbitrary type style is read out of those font cartridges in correspondence to the character codes and the printing process is executed.
However, in the head unit of the recording apparatus for printing the readout font pattern, for example, in the thermal head, bubble jet head, or the like, in order make the characters to be printed uniform, in general a heat generating amount is corrected on the basis of the type style of the characters to be printed by reference to a correction table in which the heat generating amounts are previously stored and, thereafter, the characters are printed.
Such a kind of correction table is held in a special area in a memory on the control side to control the recording apparatus and is commonly used. Therefore, in the recording apparatus which can print the character font patterns of a plurality of kinds of type styles which are read out of a plurality of font cartridges, an extremely large memory area for the correction table is needed. There is a problem that the memory areas necessary for the other controls which are inherently needed for printing are also partially occupied by such a large memory area for the correction table, so that the printing process control efficiency is remarkably obstructed.